This, friends, is the title of the very dancing boy project. It is a ten minute documentary short, being shot in secret, and to be included at the opening of the first dancing boy stage play, "The Dancing Boy of Hollywood: An American Tragedy." It concerns how the practice of child sex trafficking, originating in Afghanistan, was brought to Hollywood in the 1970s - I've finally gotten the inside story.
Just now though I want to talk about another dancing boy. Early this morning I wrote him an apology. The last time we saw each other in person - the summer of 1992 - I sat pale and silent, staring through the windshield of my parked car as he told me his own story of abuse. I said nothing afterward either, just nodded. I wanted him to know, after all these years, that I understood - that I remembered it all.
He is the subject of the second dancing boy feature, "The Little Drummer Boy." For years after the events that will be depicted in the film, he was a priest. Not anymore. In fact, before too long he will playing himself in the saga.
He's kept a low profile in adulthood - I'll discuss more about what he did coming up later - but was photographed in 2014 by a reporter for a major urban tabloid, the one with a numerically named gossip site. It was for a party in conjunction with a literal horse race. His first name, albeit not his stage name, is the same as a saint.
Here is the letter:
Hi *******,
My apologies for addressing you by your stage name, but sometimes it's easier to talk about things this way.
I wanted to let you know that all those years ago when I sat, stone-faced, as you told me your story, it wasn't indifference - it was horror. I was literally unable to unlock my jaw, and speak even a word. It was the pain of my own experience, and my absolute sympathy for you. I heard you - every word of it.
How will you know? I will recount it, not word for word, but every detail for sure.
It happened when you were twelve, you said, and touring parts of the country over summer break with a musical theater group - you even got to spend five days in Ireland. I remember it being church-related, not the Catholic Church, but the other church that many in the community attended simultaneously. It was an ultra-orthodox, breakaway Catholic church that rejected the reforms of Vatican II.
You were there that day to rehearse your role as a singing altar boy, but after flubbing a line, cursed under your breath. The priest at the piano stopped then and there, and pointed at the door. You knew what meant: confession.
The other boys watched silently as you left the room, and walked down the hall, stopping at the lockers where you and your fellow players stored their street clothes. You opened yours and unzipped your backpack, taking out a flask of whiskey. You drank until it was gone.
By the time you got to the booth you felt seasick, you said, and half-incoherent. You barely remember what you said, only that you confessed not just to the swearing but to the drinking and the feelings you were starting to have for one of your classmates.
Unexpectedly, the priest came out afterward, and invited you back to his office. He had a smile on his face.
Once there, you made small talk - about family and school, the musical, your travels. He had been to Ireland once, as a young priest. Everything is green, he said.
Then he picked up the phone and made a call. It was to one of his fellow priests, and for some reason he was speaking in Spanish. (He wasn't himself Latino, but had learned the language to serve the growing Latino community. You weren't yet in junior high, and didn't understand a word of it.)
A short time later, two priests arrived, and one of them instructed you to get on your knees and put your hands above your head. You stood up and went for the door, but one of the priests stepped in front of it, and pointed a stun gun at you. You put your hands up, but he shocked you anyhow. You remembered the stinging sensation over all your body, and how you couldn't stay standing. You fell to the floor, where they cuffed your wrists and ankles.
One of them helped you up, and told you you were being remanded into their custody. It was a diversionary program, they said, meant to keep troubled kids from ending up in juvenile hall. (You had heard rumors of it, you said, but no one spoke of what happened there.)
Hobbled by the restraints, they walked you down the hall, then down a flight of stairs. An armed security guard stood in front of a locked door beneath the church complex.
"Intake?" he said.
"Yes," one of the priests replied.
He unlocked the steel door and you were led down another hall and into a small room, the door locked behind you. One of the priests removed your handcuffs and leg irons and ordered you to undress to your briefs. You did as you were told, remembering the cold of the room, and wanting nothing more than to be home, in bed, asleep. Another priest quipped that they were out of jumpsuits. "What a shame," the first said. "It looks like he'll have to perform this way."
With that, the third priest opened an interior door, which led onto a stage, the curtain drawn; there was a single microphone, and a separate curtain-enclosed space. You were pushed out onto the stage and the door shut behind you. The first notes of one of your numbers started. Then, the curtain opened. Two dozen men, maybe more you said, and many of them prominent members of the church and community, were seated in the audience. Some of them cheered when they saw you.
You stood there, stone-faced, and pale with terror. But you knew, somehow, that you were supposed to perform. And on cue, you sang the song - beginning to end.
When it was over, the men cheered and whistled, and one of the priests - all three by now had entered the space through the audience door - stepped up on stage, and thanked the men for attending. Then, he said, it was time for the main attraction.
With that, he opened the interior curtain to reveal an apparatus, imported from Singapore, he said, and used in judicial canings there. A security guard came forward and gripped your wrist, so hard it hurt. He led you toward it, where your waist was pressed against a horizontal bar, and your upper body forced over it. Your wrists were restrained to a separate, lower bar, and your ankles to another one.
The priest was handed a cane and the men cheered. He pulled down your briefs to you ankles and they cheered again. And then it began, so many times you said you stopped counting. By the end of it you had blacked out - from drink, from fear, from pain - and all you remember next is waking up in a small cell in a regulation blue jumpsuit and new white briefs.
You laid there, your bottom stinging, for what you thought must have been several hours, watching by a moving, closed circuit camera. Your eyes followed it from time to time. Finally, your cell door opened, and in came your favorite priest from the parish - he had been your mentor since you were eight. He could always make you laugh, you said.
He was apologetic too, saying he didn't approve of this kind of discipline. He brought you a sandwich, along with candy and soda. You ate it all eagerly (you had missed breakfast that day).
"When do I get to leave here?" you asked.
"That isn't up to me," he said, gently strumming your hair, "but I might be able to put in a good word for you."
With that, he began to touch you, first through your jumpsuit, then after undressing you to your underwear, that way too. Before it was all over, he had inserted his finger into you as he did it.
And that was the end: of not just your time in church custody, but your childhood itself. You told no one, not parents, friends, or even the therapist they sent you to when you started acting out. It wasn't a private hell - it was a secret one.
And I'm so sorry - that I couldn't be there for you then, couldn't have stopped it from happening. I'm so sorry that you, like me, became one of them: a dancing boy of Hollywood.
Be well, and good to yourself ******* ******* *****.
Kindly,
***** ********
